Mr. Allison is clear about his basic principles. He understands that economic success can only come about in a nation of free people who benefit or suffer from their own decisions. He understands that production engaged in by free individuals, not consumption, will improve economic conditions and he understands that re-distribution brings little in the way of economic stimulus. Please note: All blogs on this account are copyrighted in the year of their publication by Robert Villegas, Jr.

Go Galt! Send a Copy of Atlas Shrugged to Your Representatives

Find Their Addresses Above and Send by Clicking Here

Monday, April 23, 2012

The Obama administration
is making some of the biggest mistakes in history.This is because it is
systematically operating as a de facto dictatorship, running roughshod over the
Bill of Rights.In the previous blog
post (Part 1, by the same title), I mentioned that the administration had taken
the position, early on, that it was responsible for making all decisions in the
economy.This was a serious over-reach
even beyond the incredibly oppressive Bush policies of 2008.It was based upon an assumption made by
President Obama that the election meant his views could override the
Constitution.The consequence is that he
established a mindset among his appointees that Executive action was more important than
the separation of powers, that political outcomes were more important than
individual rights.

“By the time he
joined the Obama administration, Tim Geithner had settled on a narrative of the
financial crisis that had the virtue of being nearly correct.As Geithner saw it, the government had faced
two imperatives during that tumultuous time.The first was to stop the panic and save the banks.The second was to satisfy the country’s
bloodlust toward Wall Street.Geithner
believed –and this was his real insight—that you could do only one or the
other.Anything truly vengeful, such as
cleaning out whole floors of executives or other forms of what Geithner called “Old
Testament justice,” could destroy the institutions you were trying to
save.But anything merely symbolic—a firing
here, and a perp walk there—the public would dismiss as a stunt.” (1)

“And yet, when
Geithner traveled a few hundred yards from his office to the White House for
the daily senior staff meeting…he was surrounded, as it were, by
petulance.The president’s top aides
were desperate to solve the crisis.They
were just as desperate to position the administration as resolutely
anti-fat.cat.They pleaded with Geithner
to fire a bailed-out CEO.They begged
him to hack away at executive pay.” (2)

In these two
paragraphs, author Noam Scheiber has inadvertently exposed the erroneous view
that the government can properly do such things as fire executives and meddle
with salaries.These people, the “aides”
of our nation, appointed by the President, think they can do virtually
anything they want.They act like
bullies drunk with power, completely ignorant of the “rule of law”.They act as if they are the law.The proper question, then, is “Who do they
think they are?”

I would like to remind
you that during previous periods of our history, many American Presidents had a deep respect
for the Constitution and the rule of law.There were times when an American President would never consider violating the rights of American citizens for the sake of a
political goal.Doing such a thing was considered uncivilized and immoral. They
knew that one of the cornerstones of a civilized society is respect for
individual rights. Today such violations are done with impunity, as if they were normal. The President's aides are barbarians who don't know it.

Contrary to the
opinions of the President’s aides, our country, when it was founded, was not intended
to be a dictatorship.No one in
government had the right or the authority to fire executives in the
private sector.No one, except a judge, had the authority to arrest any individual.First, there must be probable cause that a
law (passed by Congress) has been violated; then there must be an arrest, a charge,
a trial in a court of law and evidence.This does not come from the Treasury department.

Timothy Geithner
cannot fire CEOs.He has no authority to
do that.Neither does the government
have the authority to deal with issues of executive pay.Those issues are handled by private
contracts.Certainly, the government
proclaimed that these companies had accepted government
bailout money and that the bailout was a de facto government takeover.But this line of reasoning only points out the
ludicrous nature of the bailouts and what kind of things can happen when government oversteps its proper role.

Certainly, one
could say that this dictatorship happened under Bush and that Obama had nothing
to do with it.I would remind people
that by the time the bailouts were being considered by Congress, Obama had
known that the election was swinging his way and he supported the bailouts,
even participated in meetings about them as a candidate.So, it cannot be said that Obama did not have
a significant role to play in the bailouts.

The government’s
presumption that it had the right to intervene in the economy was one of the
grossest violations of individual rights in the history of the nation; and it
was justified, as are all usurpations of power, by a ginned up emergency that
supposedly threatened the entire fabric of our society.

The truth is
that government actions taken by both Bush and Obama have prolonged the
economic consequences of the housing crisis.As of today, almost four years later, our economy still hangs on a
thread.Had we allowed those companies
to fail, we would be farther along toward a recovery (if not fully recovered by
now).The government’s actions served
the purpose of re-distributing the problem to all parties in the economy, even
those who would not have been harmed by the collapse.The money taken out of the economy for the
bailout has also prolonged high levels of unemployment.

Had advisors in
the Bush administration (and later in the Obama administration) refused to interfere
in the dealings of private companies then these companies could have
solved the issues of “insolvency” by normal private means; and this would have
contained the damage.Certainly, it
would have meant hard times for some people but those who were not party to the
housing crisis would not have been harmed.Housing prices would have found their bottom and then recovered.Those who held toxic assets would have held
on to them or sold them at a loss; companies dependent upon the success of the
failed banks and institutions would have found other places for their
investment dollars.The rights of all
citizens to make their own economic decisions would have been preserved and the
American economy would have quickly recovered.

But worse than
the housing collapse and its effect on banking was the continuation of the
re-distributive philosophy of the Obama administration. In order to deal with the collapse caused by
re-distribution, these very unwise men doubled down on re-distribution.They ignored Fannie and Freddie by allowing it
to continue its policies.Then they re-distributed
the American taxpayer’s money to the failed banks that were destroyed by Fannie
and Freddie.Then by means of stimulus
programs, they redistributed more money to green energy debacles and leftist
giveaways such as in the Pigford scandal.They blocked banks from foreclosing on unpaid loans and they insisted
that those banks re-finance loans to people who could not make payments on them.To deal with the consequence of their
policies on unemployment they increased unemployment and food stamp payments.To further “stimulate” the economy, they re-distributed
more money to their favorites in leftist organizations that were already
wasting billions of dollars.The
examples of re-distribution are endless.

Finally, the
government’s policy toward “fat-cats” was nothing more than show designed to
divert attention from the fiasco that the government had caused.It was not the fat-cats on Wall Street who
caused the collapse, but government bureaucrats at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
who had been issuing loans under the auspices of the Community Reinvestment Act.This is the real scandal that even a person as "intelligent" a Timothy Geithner ignored.

The financial crisis,
created by people whose philosophy of re-distribution matched that of the
President, was the pretext for the government taking over the banking
industry.If you think these jokers can
save the banking industry, you are mistaken.They are the destroyers of it and their method of destruction is the
same that caused the crisis: re-distribution.

The assumption
of dictatorial power by the government in this crisis is what caused it
to deepen and spread to the rest of the economy.The use of enormous amounts of taxpayer
dollars was a theft of money held by individuals in private accounts and this theft is what caused our present problems.

(1)The Escape Artists: How the
Obama Team Fumbled the Recover by Noam Scheiber Page 115, ebook version

Thursday, April 19, 2012

To be the Chief Executive of the greatest country in the world must take a leader with a great deal of knowledge, experience and insight. I think it takes a special ability to understand the principle of cause and effect concerning how government action impacts the lives of real people. Above all, it takes a keen understanding of history as well as deep insight into the philosophical principles that inform men today. The President of the United States must be wise beyond his years even if he is an older man.

The question of how the President should handle the most pressing issues of the day is the province, not only of philosophers who wrote centuries ago, not only of the intellectuals and college professors who teach in our universtities, but of the average citizen whose responsibility it is to vote in an informed way. In the USA, the leader of the country is not the President but the informed citizen: YOU. It is your responsibility to tell your chosen agents in the government what they should do, the principles to which they should adhere and, especially, when the nation has gone in the wrong direction. You expect your designated representatives to make decisions based upon the widest available knowledge and when they do not, when they have gone off course, you have to replace them with the right people.

For instance, the President must have available to him the widest range of opinions possible on the key issues of the day. His advisors must be men of profound experience with the highest intellects, men with access to the widest accumulated knowledge as well as the historical precedents that animate and give rise to an understanding of the issues. In order for the President to make a final decision, nothing must be left unexamined and all relevant factors must be taken into consideration. And, as you read about the ideas and actions of your leaders, you must be assured that they are objective and reasonable people.

I’ve often admired the ambiance of the White House. On the walls and throughout the building, you see ancient paintings and sculptures that remind us of the magnificent history of the country and the wisdom of many past Presidents. Each man is presented to us as someone who handled incredibly difficult questions and who possessed the knowledge and experience that made the country a better place.

One man honored at the White House, George Washington, struggled to build the nation in war and to preserve it as it strove to find its character. We are reminded of his famous advice to the nation that helped it prevail once his counsel was no longer available. I am privileged to have visited his home at Mount Vernon, enjoyed the beautiful countryside that he loved, stood upon the banks of the Potomac River there. I saw the bed where he died and stood next to his casket. I wondered, on that beautiful day, what he would think of today’s leaders. In Washington's hands, our nation was a reflection of the ideals and moral premises of the people who put him into the leadership of our nation. They saw in this great man the culmination of the spirit for life that made the people what they were; the spirit of adventure and freedom.

Then there is Lincoln, who struggled with many crucial questions about the nature of the Union, the principles for which it stood and how to preserve those principles. The people elected him because they felt he reflected the love for freedom that belonged to all men of all colors and origins. They expected that he would reflect their values and their dedication to freedom. I wonder at the kind of dedication it must have taken for him as he stood on the balcony of the White House and looked out over the nation he led. I admire his vast wisdom and his certainty in the rightness of his course, a certainty that knew the meaning of the principle that “all men are created equal”. I marvel at the brevity and universality of his Gettysburg Address.

One hopes for the wisdom of every holder of the Office of the Presidency. Our nation needs knowledgeable, experienced people who understand that the principles of this nation are universal and that they are wise and seriously considered. A leader of this country must respect the wisdom that built this nation, understand the reasons behind its principles and honor those principles when he takes the oath of office. Otherwise, he will be party to its destruction. One should not seek to be President of the United States without also having much wisdom and knowledge. He or she must understand that this nation cannot be led by people who lie and cheat, scheme and steal.

Yet, the mistakes of the past were not made by wise men. They were made by men uncritically following a host of intellectuals and citizens who offered a different standard of moral worth. And, what's worse, the people who elected them did not do their job properly. They made their decisions too lightly, perhaps were not well-informed and, even more importantly, thought that a little bit of re-distribution was fine as long as it was not too much. When the people are educated according to the ideas of collectivism, altruism and deception, then the country can get off course and the results are not only morally corrupt, they also impoverish the people.

In order to explain my meaning, I would like to embark on an analysis of some of the biggest mistakes in history. Through this series of blog posts, I want to show the importance of knowledge in the Presidency and how that knowledge can be used to solve some of our deepest problems. I’d like to show how the unwillingness to consider relevant knowledge can steer a nation off course and cause people to suffer. We will begin by analyzing some of President Obama’s actions since the start of his Presidency.

The first big mistake that the Obama administration made was to assume that it was responsible for making every decision in the economy. This mistake was based upon the idea of an "activist" government that is responsible, not for protecting rights, but for creating rights and then taxing citizens who must pay for the new "rights". In practical terms, this view created a huge bottle neck for the entire country. Both large and small businesses, because they did not know how coming decisions would be made, began to curtail vital business decisions waiting for the administration to act.

To illustrate this mistake, and to learn the deeper causes of it, let’s look at the idea of the Presidency that our new President held before he became President. In his speech on election night, he said:

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”(1)

The mistake here is to believe that the United States is a democracy. The trick here is a bait and switch; to say "democracy" while most people are thinking "democratic republic" which is a different concept. This deception creates tremendous problems for the nation.

Our country is not a democracy and to act as if it is a democracy is to betray a poor knowledge of history and of political philosophy. A democracy is a nation where the will of the majority rules. The classic example in Greece held that the majority could wield the power of life or death over any individual. As long as the majority voted upon it, anything could be done by vote. This leaves the door open to the gang that convinces people it speaks for them and gives it the incentive to rig votes and take dictatorial power.

When he took power, the President operated as a "ruler" rather than as a leader of a republic. He ignored the fact that our government operates according to a division of powers with checks and balances. Because he had talked about "democratic" principles, he assumed that the election had given him a mandate to act unilaterally and ignore the Constitution. His basic argument: "We won."

This was a huge mistake, not only for the President, but also for the people who voted for him, especially those who thought they were voting for a man who would preserve and protect the Constitution.

The argument that a majority elected President Obama to do THEIR WILL is a false argument. This is not a democracy. The majority elected President Obama to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States. It did not confer virtual dictatorial power upon him.

A constitutional scholar, as the President is reputed to be, should know this. The President can’t just do whatever he wishes. There are principles embedded into the Constitution that protect against the abuse of Executive Power and it is the President’s responsibility to do his job according to those principles. These are the principles of limited government which specify the rules under which the President can act. For instance, the President cannot act unilaterally. He can only enforce the laws passed by Congress. He cannot act alone and when he attempts to do so, Congress should stop him; the people should stop him.

What does the idea that we are a democracy lead to? Broken promises:

“America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations.

But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that:
• This was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal;
• This was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.
• This was the moment -- this was the time -- when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.”

A government that promises these kinds of results sees itself as powerful enough to bring them about:

• It can virtually take over a large part of the economy and manage it (the automotive industry)
• It can engage in graft and “encourage” political contributions and payoffs (crony capitalism, GE, unions, Warren Buffett)
• It can pick winners and losers in the competitive economy, rewarding those who pay bribes and punishing those who don’t (Solyndra and green energy subsidies)
• It can create a dependent segment of voters who don’t want to vote away their government-provided benefits (Health Care Legislation)
• It can be the arbiter of success and failure in the economy by creating regulations that favor friends and disfavor enemies (Economic Regulation)
• It can eliminate any restrictions upon its activities by blatantly violating the Constitution and forcing hundreds of Constitutional challenges that the Supreme Court cannot handle (British Petroleum, Executive Orders, Legislative Bribes in return for votes, etc., etc.)

Now we know why the President’s first term was such a disaster and why the Tea Party took shape. “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

Saturday, April 7, 2012

I try not to get upset about things that progressives do even though many of them are brutally dishonest. A recent video that a friend sent to me almost knocked me off the rails. I’ve posted the full video below as footnote number (1). It exposes a diabolical effort on the part of the left to use the Trayvon Martin episode to set off a race war that could lead to the deaths of thousands or millions of Americans.

I even thought that I wouldn’t advertise the existence of the video to keep Van Jones from getting more undeserved publicity. But the ideas presented in this video are so subversive of society, so evil and so dangerous that I have to comment about it so readers can learn about the evils of collectivism. You need to know the kind of killers that President Obama has let loose on society. You need to understand what they are doing and how they hope to get away with it.

Van Jones’ effort to call all conservatives racists, as he does in this video, betrays a common method of deception that has been engaged by totalitarians for many decades. It is the method of using collective thinking (group thinking) when discussing the actions of individuals. A crime is not a group phenomenon; it is engaged in by an individual seeking to harm another individual. It is a volitional act and is therefore the responsibility of the individual who perpetrated the harm. Properly, crime legislation should be about protecting the individual rights of the victim, not about any sort of bogus group rights. Groups don't have rights; only individuals do. When individual issues are dealt with according to group conflicts, such thinking poisons the minds of people and the results are prejudice and unfair treatment toward individuals.

Some of you will remember Van Jones as the one-time Obama Czar responsible for transitioning our industrial economy from fossil fuels to green energy. This initiative was part of a grand strategy that combined Cap and Trade legislation and global warming fears with government investments in green technologies.

Let’s leave aside the issue that this initiative could not possibly succeed for a variety of reasons. Let’s stay on Van Jones. You will recall that, once it was discovered that Mr. Jones was an avowed Marxist, several individuals on the “right” began to expose past statements made by Mr. Jones that did not represent “mainstream” ideas. A clarion call went out that the President was promoting, without the advice and consent of the Senate, communists and other radicals who were decidedly anti-American. Soon, very soon, Mr. Jones was fired and put out to pasture.

Or so we thought. I’ve had a suspicion for some time that the radical left does not want Mr. Jones to disappear. In fact, since he was famously fired Mr. Jones seems to be everywhere. His statement that he is no longer a communist is incongruous to say the least. His claim that he wants to hire unemployed youth in government subsidized “green” companies is a farce. His work to indoctrinate children with communist principles is certainly dubious, and his posing as a thinker with new ideas (really old Marxist ideas) on how to make industry more socially responsible should also be questioned.

Are we viewing an orchestrated effort to make this man look like a capitalist with lots of conservative ideas? Should we let our guard down and let him once again return to the family of man? No. Mr. Jones has recently burst out of his shell and revealed himself again for what he truly is: a partisan propagandist for class and race warfare. Mr. Jones has shed his recently acquired “pro-capitalist” persona in order to tell us that all of white American society is racist. He has found his new truth in the Trayvon Martin scandal and especially in the “stand your ground” laws. These laws, he declares, are an effort to kill innocent blacks on the streets.

What Mr. Jones ignores is that the "stand your ground" law in Florida also applies to and protects black people. But let’s stay on track. What he seems to be saying is that the Koch Brothers (two influential conservative businesspeople who support Republican causes), through an organization known as ALEC (2), have funded a legislative effort to establish “stand your ground” laws in 22 states. To date, this "racist" law is in place in Florida, the state in which Trayvon Martin was killed. So the thinking goes: Trayvon Martin is black. He was killed because of the “stand your ground” law. In other words the "white racist" George Zimmerman killed him because he was free to stand his ground against blacks who attack whites. This makes the “stand your ground” law racist, and since its implementation was supported by ALEC which is supported, in part, by the Koch Brothers, this makes the Koch Brothers racists and this makes Florida a racist state and ALEC which is an organization dedicated to conservative issues, is also racist. Because conservatives are mostly white, then all white conservatives are racists, and, well, let's be consistent, all whites are racist by nature (Critical Race Theory). I think that pretty well says the unsaid here, except for one more conclusion: since ALEC supports conservative causes and the group most often opposes progressive causes, being against progressivism is also racist. This means all whites and all conservatives are racists and so they should all be put in jail because they are white. I’m not sure if it also means all white progressives are racists too. I think it depends on whether they vote for President Obama.

Needless to say, this “revelation” by Van Jones of just how racist conservatives are will be important information for voters in the lead up to the next election. Everyone must get on the bandwagon and totally repudiate all conservatives and Republicans. Not just Coke and Pepsi (which I will never purchase again), but everybody should do everything they can to expose ALEC and ensure that this crony-capitalist scheme (as described by progressives) is put out of business and boycotted especially on election day. That means voting overwhelmingly for the only honest politician who is working for the middle class against corporate America, you know the guy from Chicago whose cause is so righteous that he only helps corporations that bundle money for his election, yes, Barack Obama, the union money launderer who is the favorite candidate of Mickey Mouse.

Let’s get back to reality. The concept of “stand your ground” is not new. In fact, courts have considered the issue in several cases as far back as 1906 and generally, they have sided with the person being violently attacked. It has never been considered an issue that enabled racist whites to kill innocent blacks…at least not until now. Wikipedia describes “stand your ground” this way:

“A stand-your-ground law states that a person may use force in self-defense when there is reasonable belief of a threat, without an obligation to retreat first. In some cases, a person may use deadly force in public areas without a duty to retreat. Under these legal concepts, a person is justified in using deadly force in certain situations and the "stand your ground" law would be a defense or immunity to criminal charges and civil suit. The difference between immunity and a defense is that an immunity bars suit, charges, detention and arrest. A defense permits a plaintiff or the state to seek civil damages or a criminal conviction. More than half of the states in the United States have adopted the Castle doctrine, stating that a person has no duty to retreat when their home is attacked. Some states go a step further, removing the duty of retreat from any location. "Stand Your Ground", "Line In The Sand" or "No Duty To Retreat" laws thus state that a person has no duty or other requirement to abandon a place in which he has a right to be, or to give up ground to an assailant. Under such laws, there is no duty to retreat from anywhere the defender may legally be. Other restrictions may still exist; when in public, a person must be carrying the firearm in a legal manner, whether concealed or openly”. (3)

What this means is that "stand your ground" legislation is not some recently cooked up racist idea from some Republican smoke-filled room. It is not intended to suppress the black vote or commit genocide against the entire black race. "Stand your ground" is a principle that has nothing to do with race, has had a long history of case law and is really about immunizing the individual against frivolous law suits when he happens to survive and win out over a criminal who was intent on robbing or killing him.

In view of this long history of “stand your ground” legislation, consider what Van Jones is saying. The whole history of the “Stand your ground” legal battle is a right wing racist conspiracy that goes back to 1906. The fact (if it is a fact) that the Koch Brothers are behind recent efforts to extend “stand your ground” legislation is considered by Mr. Jones as proof that they have a racist intent to kill blacks “at will”. Is Mr. Jones aware of the extensive case law about this concept? Does he understand that in the past even progressive Supreme Court Justices have defended the principle of “stand your ground”? Is he aware that “stand your ground” is actually a response to past laws that demanded a retreat before a person could defend himself? I would say that these facts are irrelevant to Mr. Jones because they do not justify the conclusion that he wants to draw, that the Koch Brothers are racists and that white society wants to kill black people.

I question the intent of Mr. Jones’ effort to vilify whites and stop the “stand your ground” laws. It is, in fact, an effort to stop ALEC, an organization that has opposed the welfare state and ethno-centric favoritism for many years. It is not a racist organization. In addition, the effort to ensure that honest citizens can protect themselves without civil liability is not part of a racist intent to kill "innocent" black people. It is an effort to ensure that people, any people, of any color, can protect themselves in cases where they are being attacked - without having to worry that later they might be accused of criminal murder for defending themselves or sued civilly for having harmed or killed their assailant. “Stand your ground” laws protect innocent people against predatory lawyers seeking to squeeze money out of them for crimes committed against them.

Jones’ assertion that “stand your ground” laws are racist, if heeded, will have the effect of releasing criminals onto the streets to "kill at will". Without “stand your ground” in effect, a criminal can expect that anyone he attacks will have no legal standing for defending him or herself. In effect, “stand your ground” protects innocent people from assault because the criminal will know that such a citizen can protect himself and that the law defends his right to do so. If the progressives were really concerned about violence on the streets of, let’s say, south Chicago, they would be overwhelmingly in favor of “stand your ground” laws.

What makes me angry is that I know what Van Jones is doing and I know that he is trying to destroy civility and reasoned debate in society in order to replace it with mob rule, mob lynchings and other forms of violence. The outrage expressed by many race baiters in the Trayvon Martin case is being stoked and aggravated in order to create disorder and violence on the streets. This is not about Trayvon Martin or George Zimmerman. This is about a deliberate effort by the radical left to breakdown improving race relations and destroy civility for the sake of power.

I was asked what I thought was going to happen if people start believing that all white people are racist. I answered: “There is only one thing that could happen when collectivism becomes the common method of thinking: lots of dead bodies. That's what happened in Germany when Hitler started railing against the Jews. It was the illogical and unscientific “group-think” that gave Hitler the justification for jailing and murdering Jews. And this is the same method that Jones and his radical friends are trying to smuggle into our society. What’s the next line? ‘Whites are racists; we must get rid of them’.” And, in fact, many of the radicals have been saying exactly that for several decades. All they need is a good lynch mob atmosphere to get it done.

The worst aspect of this travesty is that Republicans are clueless about the race warfare that people like Jones are trying to bring about. The only people who seem to understand it are the black conservatives who have spoken out; Thomas Sowell (4), Shelby Steele (5) and a few others. They are warning us about these radicals and their destructive goals.

When you consider that George Zimmerman, the man accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, is a Latino, not a white person, that all the media "evidence" that was used against him (the evidence that started the so-called outrage), was selectively edited, you have to ask yourself about the immoral nature of people who would take advantage of a situation like this in order to create a lynch mob mentality, not just on George Zimmerman, but on every non-black American in the country. This is utter evil, and because of it, we are moving into a dangerous time for the nation. The real racists are those who are stoking the fires of this issue and they must be called to task.

Radicals like Van Jones are not engaged in a war to help blacks or even to protect them. Their war is against the individual, the one person who must be enslaved in order to advance the entitlement state. This person must live in fear about whether tomorrow he will be robbed on the street or robbed by his government.

Collectivism is the means of creating fear in individuals and of forcing them to give up on a better life. One thing is sure, in this environment today; if you are white, don’t count on being in the right group. It doesn’t matter that you are a fair minded, hardworking individual who has treated all people equally. The only thing that matters is that other whites were racist and, well, you’re white. Sorry. This is the essence of collectivism.

Racial division is the goal of Van Jones and our present government: If they can spread the poison of collective thinking, as did Hitler; if they can get you to think in terms of groups, then they can justify anything. If you really want a civilized society that gives everyone a fair chance, you cannot allow them to use race to divide us. The idea that groups matter over individuals is the lie that Hitler and the Nazis brought to the world. The result was a devastated world and millions of murdered individuals. On the basis of racial group thinking, the logical fallacy known as overgeneralization, fascists can direct the debate to favor any group they choose and disfavor any group they’d just as soon do without. This process enabled Hitler to gain the trust and loyalty of Germans and the deaths of other people who were not part of that group. Is Van Jones the next Adolph Hitler? Only you can make sure that he is not.

Speak out and let people know that this nation is about individuals not groups, that it should focus on individual rights not "social justice". This is a society based on laws, not on men who hold the power of life and death over other people.